Review: Descender Vol. 6- The Machine War
Quick Summary
Pros: The first two chapters answer nearly every question about the history of this comic universe. The rest of the book is an emotional, epic, and unpredictable conclusion to the series. The conclusion works well, in most places, and helps set up a spin-off series. This volume contains some of the best artwork in the series.
Cons: Some of the justification behind the volume’s conclusion is weak.
Overall: The final volume in the Descender series hits all the right marks. It gives readers satisfactory answers to the mysteries established at the comic’s beginning; it is packed with solid emotions; it has plenty of suspense all the way through; and it contains absolutely gorgeous artwork. There is one place where the narrative stumbles but it is not enough to distract from the comic’s many positive aspects. Anyone who enjoyed any volume in this series should read its conclusion because it is well worth the journey.
Story
The Descender Vol. 6: The Machine War, by Jeff Lemire, concludes the Descender series with a series of epic encounters and a ton of valuable information. Readers discover the answers to questions that have remained a mystery since the series began. This gives a more accurate representation of this universe’s history and provides a ton of context for the events that have taken place over the past six volumes. Once these questions are answered, the book moves into a conclusion packed with fantastic individual moments and executed in a way that feels accurate to the direction this series has taken. All in all, this is a captivating book and a solid way to end this comic.
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The Machine War starts out with two flashback chapters dedicated to explaining the history of the Harvesters and introducing the all-powerful Descenders. All of the information here is incredibly interesting and helps enhance a number of plot points from this volume and previous volumes. It also continues the themes regarding the value of humanity and how it relates to robotics.
All of this then leads into the volume’s climactic and completely unexpected conclusion. The entire transition into the volume’s endgame is tense, as multiple parties are constantly threatening to kill each other or the main cast members. Then, once the Descenders arrive, it kicks things up even further by having them threaten to completely destroy all of humanity. As this threat became more pronounced, I was sure that Tim-21 would be able to convince the Descenders that humanity was worth saving and that they would call off their attack. This clearly did not happen. The near-complete destruction of humanity was a completely unexpected but well-executed conclusion for a series that has been slowly building toward this inevitable endpoint.
This opens the door to a whole new world of possibilities for the comic’s follow-up series. It introduces a new character, completely removes robots from the equation, and almost completely resets the societal structure of humanity. It even teased the existence of magic, which I’m sure will play a part in this new world. All of this helps build excitement for more from this universe.
The only problem with the conclusion is the lack of satisfactory justification behind the actions of the Descenders. They claim that their last attack was meant to be a warning and even go so far as to state that humanity “knew the consequences” of their actions, yet this is completely untrue. If anything, the Descender’s attack sparked further mistreatment of robots that would then go on to fuel humanity’s current predicament. It is a rather massive gap in the logic of creatures who are otherwise portrayed as very intelligent and fair. Hopefully, this will be given a more satisfactory explanation in the Ascender series.
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Art
The artwork in The Machine War is some of the best in the entire Descender series. Throughout this volume, Dustin Nguyen continues to detail gorgeous scenes populated by beautiful and imaginative characters. However, this volume kicks things up a notch through some of the most emotional splash pages in the series. There are moments here where the visuals are perfectly able to capture the meaning of a moment and proceed to help the narrative just as much as the dialogue. The story in this volume also allows Nguyen to express some additional creativity, as there are new characters and locations introduced at the beginning and end of this book. This creativity is further reflected through Steve Wands’s lettering, which plays an important visual role toward the end of this book. Overall, in a series filled with beautiful artwork, this volume is one of the best.
Continuity
Descender Vol. 6: The Machine War continues the story from Descender Vol. 5: Rise of the Robots (Review).
The Descender series ends with this volume. The story from this series is set to continue in the Ascender series.